


Not To Be Uttered

by NeonGreyscale



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, M/M, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Repression, Slow Burn, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 14:30:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19465942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeonGreyscale/pseuds/NeonGreyscale
Summary: Ineffable.It was a descriptor of great reverence, the idea that a given concept could be so massive and important and awe-inspiring that to express it in something as fallible as words would be a sin… and yet, it also evoked things so forbidden, so taboo, that to even speak of them would invite their evil into being and irrevocably corrupt their articulator.But if you can’t speak of either, how do you ask which one is which?





	Not To Be Uttered

_13th Century B.C.E., somewhere near Midian_

* * *

Aziraphale would never say this out loud, but when it came to being an angel, the downsides far outweighed the job benefits.

First of all, where humans had many choices for what sort of life they wanted to lead, the options of an angel ultimately boiled down to two extremes: either do everything that Heaven says, or do everything that Hell says. Because one will cast you out for disobedience, and the other will destroy you completely, which doesn’t leave much room for choosing an alternative path. Humans had so much room to muck things up and make messy, unwise, immoral decisions before they became unforgivable, and as much as Aziraphale hated a mess, he couldn’t help but envy that freedom.

In the years to come, these restrictions upon angels would culminate into the sort of deep-rooted problem that threatened to ruin his life. But right now, he had only been assigned to the Earth for a few odd millennia. Right now, his feelings regarding a particular serpentine demon were just uncomplicated enough for him to feel at peace with, and they were far from reaching their final destination.

Right now, Aziraphale is just a little testy that he’s had to roam across miles of blazing dry hot land for the past couple of weeks with no breaks, in a desperate attempt to find a single man on the run, just as one might search for a needle in a haystack.

It was almost dawn, and although Aziraphale technically wasn’t supposed to succumb to pain or exhaustion or any of the other numerous failings of human biology, he had grown quite accustomed to a more human frame of mind during his time on Earth, and he imagined about halfway through his trek that his legs had started to ache and burn awfully persistently under the strain of his journey.

And it was so. And Aziraphale saw that it was absolutely torturous.

Of course, Aziraphale would never _intentionally_ miracle himself into a state of immense discomfort, but this was the downfall of being a powerful ethereal entity with an active imagination and a proclivity towards being a little bit dense.

The sun was beginning to rise over the russet hills of rock and sand of the Egyptian desert, framing the silhouette of a man approaching on the horizon, his long curls blown back by the wind. Aziraphale’s eyes widened and he picked up his speed, momentarily tripping over the sand that got caught in the toes of his sandals in his haste. They were really rather dreadful shoes in which to be wandering the desert for weeks upon end, both on account of the sand and the unflattering patterns of sunburns they tended to leave on one’s feet.

But that wouldn’t matter for much longer now, because he’d found the man he’d been tasked to guide, and he wouldn’t be punished for losing his charge after all, and before long he could, at last, get back to the rest of his life.

“Moses! Hello! Fear not, for I, the angel Aziraphale of the Eastern Gate, have come to escort you to a safe land!” the principality shouted inelegantly across the desert.

“Well thank the devil for that!” snarked Moses in a returning shout, a smile coloring the corners of his voice, and… oh dear, that wasn’t Moses after all, was it?

As the figure approached in the dim early morning light, still but a silhouette on the horizon, the sunlight cast upon his long locks of red hair made them seem to glow amber around the edges, like a corona surrounding a solar eclipse. He was carried forward by a cockeyed walk that suggested his center of gravity was ricocheting around his body like a pinball, yet somehow it only added to Aziraphale’s overall impression that he was very much in-control, powerful, and effortlessly attractive. Even though they were too far apart for Aziraphale to make out his slim features, he knew there was only one person it could be.

“Ah, Crowley,” he sighed, before catching himself. “Oh, not that I’m not pleased to see you, dear boy-- but I have a job to carry out, and I seem to have… misplaced someone very important.”

“That would be great news for me, if I didn’t have the same problem,” the demon groused, letting his weight fall onto one hip as he came to a halt in front of Aziraphale. “Bugger took off like a bat out of hell, can’t find him anywhere.”

“What do your people need Moses for?” As Aziraphale spoke, the two were already orienting themselves to the east, branching off in a direction other than the ones they’d both been heading before, and continued their search together without either of them needing to suggest it in words.

Crowley’s yellow slitted eyes flicked a glance towards the angel. “Our lot heard what yours were planning for him, so I’m supposed to tempt him to go back to Egypt, stop the whole Exodus thing in its tracks.”

Aziraphale’s brows cinched inward in what was either confusion or disapproval. “How do you plan on doing that? He’s escaping a death penalty, you know, I don’t imagine he’d be too keen to return to that.”

“I, ah, pssh, I’ve got some pretty good material...” Crowley crossed his arms and turned his head off to the side as though there were anything else to look at, the gesture of someone who knew full well that he was out of his depth but didn’t want to admit it out loud. 

You trick one or two gullible humans who were born practically yesterday into kickstarting the downfall of humanity, and suddenly your boss assigns you all the big jobs he doesn’t want to get his own hands dirty with. No matter how hard Crowley tried to stay under the radar, he couldn’t escape being Hell’s ace in the hole. It occurred to Crowley that he somehow managed to be, at once, both bad at being a demon, and bad at _being_ bad at being a demon.

The two timeless beings chatted to pass the time on their journey, but the farther they progressed, the deeper Aziraphale’s worry devolved into desperate panic, and Crowley eventually had to give up trying to distract him from how poorly their missions were going. Hours had become days, more days on top of the weeks that they’d already spent searching on their own, and Aziraphale was accumulating more and more of the effects of heat exhaustion. 

If Crowley were any less obtuse than his heavenly counterpart, he would’ve known to suggest that he simply miracle the symptoms away. But as it happened, neither of them had or ever would have that sort of clarity of mind, no matter how many millennia passed them by. 

The only thing protecting Crowley from the same foolish ailment was his natural coldbloodedness on account of being a snake-- speaking of which, at some point in their travels, he had taken his serpentine form and draped himself around the angel’s shoulders. At first it had simply been to take a short break from walking, but as he noted the dissipation of tension in Aziraphale’s muscles at the casual touch, Crowley decided that he was going to be especially lazy and remain rested on his angel friend for as long as he needed.

“He can’t have gone too much farther than ussss,” Crowley attempted to reassure Aziraphale. His tendency to hiss subconsciously presented itself much more intensely when he wasn’t in his humanoid form. “He’s been wandering the desert for just as long, except I’m fairly certain he actually needs food and water and the like.”

The attempt seemed to have the opposite effect, though, as Aziraphale’s ruddy, sweat-soaked face went pale and painted with dread. “Oh blast it, you’re right… he’s probably dead under piles of sand by now, and it’s all... my fault… agh...” Aziraphale hunched over with his hands on his knees, the wind practically knocked out of him by the effort of speaking alone. Crowley drew back his head in concern and used the tip of his tail to brush the angel’s pale sweaty hair from his face, waiting for Aziraphale to regain his composure and for his labored breath to return to a steadier rhythm. But to Crowley’s alarm, Aziraphale just sank down further, collapsing onto his hands and knees on the hot sand.

Crowley quickly slithered onto the ground and transformed back into his humanoid form. “I’ve got you,” he muttered under his breath as he hooked one arm under the angel’s knees and another behind his back, gently hoisting him into the air. He carried Aziraphale to rest against the shaded side of a tall dune; it wasn’t much protection from the glaring sun, but the middle of a desert could only offer so much. 

He performed a minor demonic miracle to conjure a canteen of cold water; the angel didn’t need water, but Crowley guessed that drinking something cold may help, which seemed to be the case as Aziraphale drank greedily from the flask the demon raised to his lips before exhaustion slowed him down once more. “If I get the savior of the Hebrews killed… they’re going to cast me out,” Aziraphale croaked out in a near sob.

Crowley found himself running a thumb across the pitiful angel’s forehead repeatedly, worrying at his own chapped lower lip with his teeth. What could he do? They had opposing goals, and even if they were to find the prophet, only one of them could succeed. For the past few days, he’d been slowly resigning himself to the probability that they’d likely not find Moses, and end up having to tell their respective authorities that one had thwarted the other, depending on whether or not the man actually made it to Midian alive. But maybe, he wondered upon seeing Aziraphale so despondent, this was too big of a job to leave up to chance or a coin-flip toss between the two of them.

“I’ll let you have this one,” Crowley said offhandedly, his tone far more nonchalant than his body language would suggest.

“What?” Aziraphale asked, meeting the demon’s eyes through his own squinted ones.

“When I find him, I’ll let you do your thing and see him to Midian. I’m sure it’ll be easy enough to explain that I couldn’t convince a man to go to his death, it _is_ a little bit above my pay grade.”

“But… you’re not even going to give it the old college try?” Aziraphale sat up just a little in concern, propping himself up on unsteady forearms, and Crowley’s hand slid down from the angel’s forehead to his cheek. “You’re the best Hell’s got, I’m sure you’ve got a chance.”

Crowley didn’t know whether or not he had Aziraphale’s exhaustion-weakened state of mind to thank for the angel praising his temptation abilities and asking if he was _sure_ he didn’t want to try to _ruin the Exodus._ Nevertheless, he was silently flattered.

“There’ll be other movements to foil. Besides, you need this win,” he reasoned. “If you fall, I doubt Hell will post you up here on Earth with me, and whoever they replace you with in Heaven’s bound to be an insufferable prick.”

Aziraphale gave a shaky smile that Crowley could feel against the palm of his head, only distantly aware of the fact that he was still touching him and should probably stop. “Thank you, my dear. But… what was that you said, when _you_ find him?”

“You’re going to rest, you’re of no use to anyone like this. I’ll come back and get you when I’ve found him.”

Aziraphale hesitated at that. “You’re a demon. What if you just leave me here and send Moses back to Egypt?”

Crowley fixed Aziraphale with an unimpressed stare. “If you think that’s what I’m planning, then stop me.”

Aziraphale held Crowley’s gaze for a few moments, before his eyes flickered down to the sand with a sigh of concession. He said nothing but had no need to; there was no pretending he didn’t trust his friend not to betray him, no matter what either of them may be.

“Right. Then you stay here, and I’ll be right back.” Crowley stood, and held onto a breath he didn’t need to take in in the first place. The desert was fairly… well, deserted, but going up into the sky was a risk nonetheless. Demons and angels alike were meant to be fairly discrete these days, and you could get in a lot of trouble getting caught by the wrong person. _If a human sees me I swear to… well._

The demon’s wings unfolded, black as night, and he took off.

* * *

The desert air was hot and dry as ever, but in the evening reprieve, it contained only an echo of the sun’s unforgiving boil. As Aziraphale felt a nudge rousing him into consciousness, every exhale came out like a sigh of relief at the loss of pressure behind his skull and the simmer beneath his skin.

After taking a moment to process his own recovery, Aziraphale blinked open his eyes and considered for a moment whether or not the form of Crowley in front of him was a dream. But as he remembered the events of the past days, he scrambled to his feet in a motion that sent sand flying around him.

“Easy, angel,” Crowley chided with a hand on his shoulder, which remained for just a moment before it was withdrawn, in opposition to the way he’d been touching Aziraphale earlier that day, when he’d fallen ill. Now that he was back in his right mind, Aziraphale was much more aware of how soft and how worried Crowley had been, of how he’d held his face like a lover and put himself at the risk of Hell’s wrath without a second thought. The Arrangement was meant to be a matter of mutual convenience, but what he’d done today obviously extended beyond that.

Judging by the way Crowley couldn’t quite hold his gaze, the demon must have come to a very similar conclusion.

“I’ve got something for you,” Crowley said to interrupt Aziraphale’s thoughts, and gestured with a nod of his head towards a distant figure standing motionless and dumbfounded in the middle of the desert. “He was pretty far off track when I found him, it’s no wonder we couldn’t get to him.”

“Moses? What’s he doing just... standing there?”

“Eh, y’know… hypnotized ‘em.”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale squawked indignantly, straightening himself out and brushing the sand from his clothes. “That’s a very rude way to go about it… He’ll be awfully disoriented.”

“Well I’m not exactly an angel, I can’t just go around blowing my trumpet and saying ‘do not be afraid!’ This was the best way to get him here without knocking him out and carrying him, unless you would’ve preferred that.”

“I suppose not,” Aziraphale granted with a sigh.

“‘Sides, when he wakes up, he’ll know which way to go. I’ve got him all set.”

A smile spread across the angel’s face, one of those patented Aziraphale Smiles that seemed to brighten up his entire being and spread into the air around him. “You thought of everything, didn’t you? This…” Aziraphale paused, trying to find the words to express his genuine gratitude in the safest way possible. “What you did for m--”

“It was nothing,” Crowley interrupted, but it was not in the tone of friendly humbleness that would normally accompany that sort of sentence. His words were short, rushed, and although he was facing Aziraphale, the angel felt as though Crowley was instead looking at something on the insides of his own eyes, troubled with the own inner workings of his mind. “I… need to get going.” He cast a pointed glance towards the man off in the distance, but his eyes were back on Aziraphale when he spoke again. “Best not get too close.”

Aziraphale felt an ache blooming in the pit of his stomach as the demon withdrew, but he knew that if Crowley hadn’t done it first, Aziraphale would have. This was further than either of them had ever taken the Arrangement, a touch more personal than either of them were prepared to deal with. “Yes, me too, I should think,” he returned softly, in a tone that sounded far more loaded and melancholic than he had aimed for, but the words were already out and couldn’t easily be returned.

The silence that stretched out between them was nearly tangible, containing within it all the words they might’ve said if not for all they stood to lose. Both of them wondered what might happen if they crossed that distance, but in this moment, neither did. There was too much at risk, to be too close, and they already laid the contents of their hearts far too open and vulnerable.

They went their separate ways until they should meet again, and this thing that had been growing between them for the past thousand years and some change-- unspoken yet at last seen-- laid stretched out between them on either end.

But somewhere in the midst of that of silence, something had started to tick.


End file.
